WaPo publishes a report on signing bonuses for blue collar workers:
This year, BNSF Railway, one of the country’s largest freight railroads, aims to hire 3,500 workers across the United States — a challenge at a time when employers nationwide say they are struggling to fill vacancies.
So, BNSF is offering something rare in blue-collar America: signing bonuses up to $25,000 for hourly workers, including conductor trainees, electricians and mechanics.
“We want to meet our customers’ needs, and we’re going to do what we need to do to hire for our company,” said Amy Casas, the railroad’s director of corporate communications.
Wow. In some ways, it makes me wish I was a lot younger, so I might investigate one of those jobs – just for fun. But it does speak to how our society has failed to value certain skill sets – not financially, but in terms of prestige – and thus left us with a bit of a shortage.
And, yet, we’re also facing a generation that still lives in their parents’ basements, or so the urban legend goes.
The question then becomes, how do we raise the prestige of those jobs so that people will actually undertake them?
